Tag: politics

I know I may be losing readers if I get political. But this isn’t political for me. It’s very VERY personal. Trump campaigned on repealing and replacing “the disaster known as Obamacare.” At least he said he wanted to replace it. All Congress ever did before him was waste their time voting 60+ times to repeal it, without even mentioning anything to replace it, and knowing Obama would veto it. So since the election, I’ve been nervous because I am one of 25 million Americans who now receives health insurance through this so-called disaster. We’ve lost the firewall protecting us from GOP demolition.

I heard, though, it wouldn’t be immediate. They are not going to just leave 25 million Americans stranded when it comes to health care. The Republicans in Congress said they were (finally) working on a replacement plan. Any repeal will not take effect until after they have something to replace it with. However, the Senate did not wait. Thursday morning, I was watching the cabinet confirmation hearings on CNN when I saw the newsfeed scrawl beneath say late at night, the Senate passed the repeal of Obamacare along party lines. What happened to waiting until you replace it with “something terrific,” as the President-elect said?

Now it goes to the House. Paul Ryan says the repeal won’t take effect until they have something to replace it with, but that does not make me feel much better. What are you going to replace it with? I know some people have some legitimate complaints about Obamacare, but wouldn’t it be easier to fix something already in place rather than throw it away and start over from scratch? If your roof leaks, does it make more sense to fix the roof or burn down the house?

I am amazed I even have to write a post like this. Health care affects everyone, Democrat and Republican. It does not discriminate by politics. There is no such thing as a Democrat heart attack or a Republican cancer. There is no such thing as a liberal childbirth or a conservative stroke. We are all going to need help from medical professionals a few times in our lives. Not only you and me but the people we love as well. If we can’t agree on affordable health care for everyone, how are we ever going to agree on anything?

So before you jump on the Repeal bandwagon (or if you are already on it), I ask you to at least hear my story and others who support and/or rely on Obamacare for our health care. And in spite of whatever else I say in this post, if the end result is that the Republican Congress and president-elect comes up with something that solves the problems some people are having AND allows me to keep my coverage, I will be the first to thank and congratulate them. I’m not optimistic that will happen, but for now we can still hope.

My life before Obamacare

Despite all the preachers who say the Bible promises health and wealth for believers, I have been poor, too poor to afford health insurance. And even if I could, I have some pre-existing conditions that disqualified me from signing up for new insurance. I once had employer-provided insurance, but when I lost that job, I lost my insurance as well. Without an employer, I was not able to get around restrictions of pre-existing conditions. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you already know one of those pre-existing conditions is depression. Here are the others:

Sleep Apnea – Causes snoring and intermittent stoppages of breathing during sleep, resulting in blood with not enough oxygen. This has been shown to result in damage to all organs: heart, brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, etc, which long term can cause devastating health conditions. Requires C-PAP machine, cost approximately $5000 plus maintenance and regular replacement of various parts.

Flat feet – Sounds like a little thing, but it throws off the alignment of your legs so that standing, walking, or running for long periods of time can hurt not only your feet but also your knees and back. You can correct it somewhat with arch supports. I remember my first chiropractor telling me if I didn’t get supports, I would keep undoing all the work he was doing to fix my back. Even with them, my feet would hurt if I was on them for too long.

ADD (without hyperactivity) – haven’t been treated in a while.

After Obamacare

When Obamacare was finally implemented, it was a Godsend. Through the Federal Marketplace I was able to find a plan that worked for me and that my Primary Care Provider (PCP) would take. The premium was well beyond my means. Since my state rejected the expansion of Medicaid to help people like me, I had to rely on federal subsidies to afford this or any plan. And under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a.k.a., Obamacare, you cannot be turned down for pre-existing conditions. So what did that mean for me?

Flat feet – still using arch supports and staying off my feet when I need to.

Depression – recently changed medication to Trintillex, which is not covered on my plan. That’s true for most new meds, especially if there’s a cheaper one available, but for me this has fewer side effects. Right now relying on samples from my PCP.

Post-existing conditions

In addition to these pre-existing conditions, I’ve had other things come up that were totally unexpected. This is where I get into the reason for the title. I developed a cyst right between the butt cheeks. I’m not sure how. I saw it happen to my grandfather in his last few years. After he broke his hip, he had a very hard time walking, so he had to sit practically all day. Maybe all the time I spent sitting to research and write got to me as well. It was easier for me, certainly, to stand and walk than for my grandfather, but when you have flat feet, you can’t stand all day. You have to get off your feet for a significant part of the day, and there are some times when you just have to sit.

Men, let me ask you. Do you like to sit with your wife/girlfriend/significant other next to you, resting her head on your shoulder? Women, do you like to sit like that with your significant other? In order to do that, I had to slide down until my butt was off the couch. It was worth the trouble, but still, I could tell she felt a little awkward.

My doctor said I needed surgery to remove it. I’ll warn you, if you’re squeamish about medical issues related to surgery in the gluteus maximus region, you may want to skip ahead to the next heading.

Turns out these things are not just on the surface, so you can’t just lance it. I scheduled the surgery for a time when my parents were visiting, so they could be on hand to drive me home and help with my recovery. I also had a smaller benign cyst on my neck. It wasn’t painful or urgent, but the surgeon said it would be cheaper overall to have both cysts removed in the same operation. Two for one deal, in other words.

The surgery was successful. But when you have a hole in your butt – besides the natural one, of course – you have to take measures to be sure it heals properly. They said it was a small hole, but that’s relatively speaking. A hole cut into your body is a hole cut into your body. I had to insert gauze into the hole and disinfect, inside and out, every time it needed changing, and then cover it. I say “I,” but actually it was hard for me to reach around to get where I needed, so my mom ended up doing that for the first two or three weeks. There are not many people you can ask to do that for you, so God bless her.

[If you skipped ahead, start here]

Without the insurance I got through the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a., Obamacare, I would have had to pay over $3000 out of pocket and probably would have had to leave the cyst in my neck. With my insurance, my co-pay was about $338, still expensive for me, but I was able to work out a payment plan that terminated in about a year rather than ten years. So after the surgery, I was able to focus on getting back to my life rather than, “Dear God, how am I ever going to pay for this.”

And that is what the Affordable Care Act was about, making health insurance affordable, so that health care could be affordable when you need it. I know some people say it has not worked that way for them. For some, their premiums shot up. Some were not able to keep their doctor under their plan. Some saw their plans leave the Federal Marketplace. I sympathize. I want it to work for you as well as it has worked for me. Thing is, all these problems could be solved if Congress – and all of us – got serious about covering everyone, like every other industrialized nation in the world does. Other nations know 1) it’s the right thing to do, and 2) people are more productive when they are healthy than when they are sick or injured. Why is that so hard for America to understand?

Even those of us who supported ACA knew it was going to need some course corrections after it got started. But the opponents of ACA never talked about how to fix it, just repeal, repeal, repeal. It’s a disaster. Get rid of it. Rolling out Medicare wasn’t entirely smooth in the beginning. If the same people had been in Congress in the 60’s, we wouldn’t have Medicare today. It was not a disaster. It was not Armageddon. It was not a slap in the face to business owners. It was not the death of America. Medicare may not be perfect, but people would fight like hell if Congress threatened to repeal it. So it should have been with Obamacare.

Finally, I have to say something about the hypocrisy of our legislators in all this. Congresspersons and Senators railed about how ACA is socialized medicine while taking the health insurance plan for government employees. So to my two Senators who just voted to repeal Obamacare, a.k.a., my healthcare, and to my Congressman who has pledged to do the same, if you hate socialized medicine, can I have yours?

Like this:

I was going to write this to the Democratic Party leadership no matter who won. Their campaigning was atrocious, and I have to say something about it.

Please, will somebody in the party leadership listen to some common sense?

Whether they won or lost, the Democrats made some horrible blunders. I have realized for years the Democrats have a much better agenda, but they are terrible at selling their brand. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama helped break that rule in recent years, but overall they still haven’t learned their lesson. Two terrible mistakes from the campaigns for Hillary Clinton and The DCCC made the unthinkable possible.

Hillary Clinton: Your slogan was, “I’m with her,” but you ran as if it was “I’m against him.”

You might want to say I’m wrong or I’m exaggerating. I will give you that it was not true of the whole campaign. The Democratic Convention of July 24-28 was conducted brilliantly. You had Michelle Obama saying, “When they go low, we go high.” (Again, you should have followed that advice). You had Barack Obama reminding us why we were so inspired to vote for him (and not just against the other guy) in 2008 and 2012, even if less so the second time. And your candidate, Hillary Clinton, actually gave us reasons to vote for her, not just against him. And it was the perfect antidote to the toxicity of the GOP convention. What a disaster that was. It was like the Republican Party had gone from Reagan’s “Morning in America,” to Alice Cooper’s “Welcome To My Nightmare.” That was why she got such a big post-convention bounce. And then in all three debates, she did great and kept the lead she had in the polls.

But you have to realize after the debates, there are only three ways people hear your message: (1) News media coverage, (2) personal appearances, and (3) campaign ads.

(1) The news media is only going to play sound bites that may or may not accurately represent you and your agenda. You have little to no control over that.

(2) In the homestretch from the last debate to the election, the candidate is going to focus all their personal appearances in the battleground states, and only people who support you are going to those.

(3) For the vast majority of people, especially those who are undecided and still could be convinced, the only chance you have to reach them personally is in your campaign ads. All I heard from her campaign in the homestretch was replays of all the disgusting things Donald Trump said. Well, not all of them. That would have taken way too long. And of course, in those final weeks, whatever ads you run are playing over and over again.

As Election Day drew near, I noticed the ads were having a psychological effect on me. They not only reminded me of my disgust toward him, but they also killed my enthusiasm for her. They were creating a negative association with the act of voting in this election. I felt strongly enough that I could put up with this and still vote for her. However, people who are undecided or who are not excited about voting do not want to participate in an activity they associate with disgust and/or killing their enthusiasm. I know it was tempting to use all the material he gave you against him, but you fell into the trap of sinking to his level.

So next time, remember: A campaign is like a battery. It runs on BOTH negative and positive. I’m not saying forget the negative. I’m saying DON’T forget the positive.

DCCC: Do you really think hopelessness, panic, and giving up is an effective fundraising strategy?

I received regular emails from various Democratic fundraising arms: the National Committee (DNC), the one focusing on the campaigning for Congress (DCCC), the Senate (DSCC), and the Leadership Council (DLC). The DCCC was the worst, not only of that group but of any campaign fundraising I’ve ever seen. Here are a few Subject lines, and these were the rule, not the exception:

We’re panicked.

All hope is lost.

Kiss all hope good bye.

We’re going to lose.

We give up.

Throwing in the towel.

Seriously folks? If the other party is raising more money than you, maybe it’s because no one wants to donate to a panicky party that says it’s giving up weeks or even months before the election. Leaders at any level cannot panic. When we are anxious, you need to calm us down. When we’re panicked, you need to be the voice of reason. That’s why we elect leaders. You need to create a strategy. You need to steady the ship. You need to give us hope. You need to remind us the game is not over, and we need to keep fighting until the final bell. You need to tell us you’re NOT giving up. This is too important to give up before the end. But when we look to you, you’re declaring defeat and running for the locker room.

I don’t know if this would have changed the outcome. You had hoped that Trump would be a drag on down-ticket candidates, and he proved to be the exact opposite. I know the GOP raised more money than you. And I know how important it is to get back a majority in Congress. But the next time you say you’re giving up before the election is over, you are not getting a penny from me.

So next time: Fire the person who wrote your fundraising emails. Find someone who knows how to communicate your vision, connect with voters, and show confidence. Don’t try to guilt us into donating. Inspire us to donate by talking about what a Democratic Congress will mean for us and for America.

What I fear from a Trump Presidency

Game over for the climate. We have just elected a president who says climate change a hoax, just like Pharaoh called the Ten Plagues a hoax. He started out in denial and ended up in de-Nile. The glaciers keep melting, and our coastal cities will be under water. We won’t see it in four years, but we will see more and more extreme weather events like Superstorm Sandy, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, days and weeks of record high temperatures. What do you think that will do to the world’s food when more and more farm land is in drought or flood?

Gap between the rich and the poor getting even worse. His policy for growing the economy is cutting taxes on the wealthy and cutting back on public services. You’ve seen this movie before. Did you forget how it ends? It works spectacularly for the wealthiest 1%, but it’s a disaster for the other 99%. Which side are you on?

Losing my health insurance. I am one of over 20 million people who got insurance for the first time in years through the Affordable Care Act. I couldn’t get it any other way because of a long list of preconditions. I understand there are problems with it, but they could all be fixed. They could already have been fixed, but Republicans in Congress had over 40 votes to repeal it. Not one of them involved any plan to replace it. So he wants to repeal and replace Obamacare? I only believe the repeal part. Instead of repealing it and starting over from the ground up, wouldn’t it be easier to just fix what’s already in place?

The end of freedom of the press. During his rallies, he whined that the news media was unfair to him for basically reporting what he said and did. Especially toward the end of the campaign he started saying, “There’s those horrible people in the media,” and the hostility of the crowds focused on them. People who sold subscriptions to The Arizona Republic were threatened and attacked. Reporters received death threats.

Thomas Jefferson considered Freedom of the Press to be even more important to the flourishing of democracy than government itself. If the press is bullied and intimidated for reporting unflattering news about our leaders, that is the quickest path to dictatorship.

The crushing of dissent. “Knock the hell out of him,” he said about a protester at his rally. He’s talked about revamping libel laws to allow him to sue news channels who report things about him he doesn’t like. And his lashing out encourages his supporters to lash out in kind. That is how dictatorships work, not democracies.

Net neutrality. This means equal access to information. Internet Service Providers should not interfere or regulate information you want to slow lanes. That’s what network neutrality means, but he has threatened to undo protections that are in place now.

Women’s healthcare. Defund Planned Parenthood, the GOP says. Why? Because they perform abortions. Yes, but that is actually 3% of what they do. The other 97% is gynecological exams, prescription assistance, cancer screenings, mammograms, pre-natal care, basically comprehensive health care for women who couldn’t afford it anywhere else. And for that, the GOP has declared war on them. They even pressured John Boehner to step down as Speaker of the House because he refused to shut down the government (again) in order to stop funding for Planned Parenthood.

Trump is a Johnny-Come-Lately to the pro life movement. He used to be, in his own words, “Very pro-choice.” Somehow he has done a 180 and is now pro life, though he never told us his story of how and why he changed his mind. That’s true of just about every conservative issue where he used to be liberal. He certainly has the right to change his mind. But you’d think someone would have asked him to give his testimony. How did you see the light? Why did you change your mind?

At any rate, the new pro-life Trump has given every indication it’s open season on Planned Parenthood, and consequently women’s health. For people who are pro life, I understand why you want to stop public funding for the 3%. But do you really have to do away with the other 97% because of that? If you get rid of Planned Parenthood, what are you going to replace it with?

Wall Street reform gone. Wall Street, big banks, and insurance companies caused the economic crash of 2008. You’d think regulating these folks so they couldn’t do it again would be a priority for the American people, if not the government. Nope. They have the money. They control Washington.That’s the real reason the system is rigged, by the way. Now, no chance of any meaningful reform. In fact, what reform we have managed, like Dodd-Frank, is now on the chopping block.

Russian tampering. Trump supporters, I know you were happy to get Hillary’s emails. But does it bother anyone that they came from Russian hackers? That Putin supported Julian Assange in putting them on Wikileaks? Not all at once but drip, drip, drip, to keep it front and center on the American campaign scene? That Russia is celebrating Trump’s election? Any other election, Russia’s endorsement would guarantee NOT getting elected. Yet Trump cozies up to Putin and it doesn’t seem to hurt him one bit. And he wants to pull out of NATO, which is exactly what Putin wants from us. It will remove a major obstacle to restoring the Soviet Union, which ultimately is his goal.

ISIS growing. ISIS has said they are going to use Trump’s election as a recruiting point. He said he was going to ban Muslims from coming into the country, and the American people elected him, not in spite of that but because of it. If you are a Muslim outside America and you want to know what America thinks of you, what does this tell you?

Right-wing extremists emboldened. The GOP has been ruled by and catering to its most extreme elements at least since Obama was elected the first time. They can’t get anything done because compromise is a dirty word to them. They shut down the government when they didn’t get everything they wanted. Recently, though, I’ve seen signs that they might be looking for ways to work with Democrats. Now, forget that. The extremists got exactly the candidate they wanted as president, and they are going to push their agenda down our throats.

Finger on the button. A man who can’t let any insult from anyone just go, a man who attacks a former employee on Twitter at 3:00 AM, a man who doesn’t know what it means to rise above petty insults, a man who said “Bomb the s%*! out of them,” even though that’s a war crime, now has his finger on the nuclear button. Sleep soundly, world.

The Supreme Court. We know he will appoint at least one Supreme Court justice, maybe one or two others, so all of this will become codified into legal precedent in the next four years. The disastrous Citizens United decision will not be overturned. Corporations are people. Money is speech. SuperPacs will become even further entrenched in the campaign process. No chance now of fixing the real reason why Washington doesn’t work, big money contributors and lobbyists. You wanted to change Washington? Congratulations, you just made it worse.

So what now?

Okay, I’m starting to sound like a DCCC email now. I’ve given a lot of negative, but to follow my own advice, I will close with some positive. A group of Liberty University students had the courage to say that Trump “does not represent our values as Christians and does not deserve our support as president.”

To the counter-argument if Hillary is elected, she will almost certainly make the Supreme Court more liberal with her appointments, they said,

“Since the birth of Christ, Christians have withstood far more serious trials and tribulations than we face today. First-century Christians faced coliseums filled with lions; today, American Christians face the possibility of a liberal Supreme Court. The Christian message of salvation through faith in Christ has prevailed despite actual threats, from actual tyrants, and it will continue to thrive no matter who is elected president in 2016,” they wrote in the editorial.

If conservative Christians could say this when faced with the possibility of a Clinton presidency, then liberal Christians like me can say the same thing now.

I know there is so much wrong with this, and I’ve only scratched the surface. But look over our 2000 year history as the Body of Christ. We have lived through bad, narcissistic, self-serving, bullying leaders, and much much worse. We will continue to thrive if we remember God is still sovereign. Christ is our savior, not Caesar. We should advocate for good government and just, competent rulers. But if our faith is truly in Christ, we may still grieve, but we will never despair over an election that did not go our way.

The Kingdom of God is not in our elected leaders. It is in and among us. A congressional election is for two years. A presidential election is for four years, maybe eight if they get re-elected. A Supreme Court appointment is for the rest of the justice’s life, so on average, say, forty years. God’s Kingdom is forever. So if you have a call from God on your life, that doesn’t change because of an election. My calling is to write, and I will keep on writing. And there are some things we are all called to do, for example, Do justice, Love mercy, and Walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8).

Interestingly, Trump and I belong to the same church. He says he loves God and loves his church, so that is one thing we have in common. I will offer then a letter from a Presbyterian minister that is great advice for Presbyterians, but I think it is also great for the president-elect and the country in general. Here are the main points.

Presbyterians treat all God’s children with dignity and respect.

Presbyterians work for justice and peace.

Presbyterians work for racial justice and economic justice.

Presbyterians advocate for the vulnerable.

Presbyterians are a reconciling people.

Presbyterians are called to act with courage, grace, and love.

My fellow Americans, whether you’re Presbyterian or not, let’s commit to doing that. And maybe next election, we won’t have to choose between two candidates who have more people with negative than positive opinions. May God bless you and God bless America, and crown thy good with justice and brotherhood from sea to shining sea.